Category: Internationalization

Cape Breton. Yet Again.

Just a quick one today, because you all know how this story goes. The Atlantic Association of Universities, bless them, produces enrolment data every October.  Why it takes every other university in the country over a year to do the same is an utter mystery.  But whatever the reason, it gives us the earliest window into what’s going on nationally in enrolments. Here’s the skinny: Total enrolment is up 1%.  But, predictably, it’s not evenly spread across student types.  International

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That Fifth Estate Episode

Many of you will have seen the Fifth Estate episode that aired two weeks ago, about international students in Canadian institutions and how many of them think – sometimes not without reason – they have been sold a bill of goods with respect to the quality of the education they receive.  If you haven’t already watched it, it’s here and you may want to give it a gander before continuing with this blog. Finished?  Good.  Then I’ll begin. Broadly speaking,

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Ontario Colleges (Yes, Again)

If you want a peek into how I spent my days, come, join with me on a quest to try to get Canadian institutional data in less than 3 years.  It’ll be fun, I promise.  It’s about Ontario Colleges, which are never not interesting. Let me show you two graphs which take us right up to the point where our national statistics agency’s data leaves off, 2019-20 (yes, really).  The first is international students as a percentage of Ontario’s total

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The Reckoning

I am calling it now: Canadian post-secondary institutions are very close to the end of the road on international student number growth.  It’s not because demand is going to dry up or anything like that.  There is still room for hundreds of thousands more international students if we wanted them, and probably demand to match as well.  It is simply that too many institutions have become too greedy, and they are imposing intolerable externalities on their surrounding communities.  A backlash

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StatsCan Enrolment Day 2021

Last Wednesday was StatsCan Enrolment Day, 2021.  Now, this does not of course mean that we now have data on enrolments for 2021.  That won’t happen for another couple of years.  No, what it means is that we have data for 2019-20, so we are only about 25 months behind reality instead of the 37 months behind that we were last Tuesday. (StatsCan is capable of faster work.  Heck, it can get university tuition fee increases more or less right

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